The San Juan Island School Board met June 17 to review options as the budget impasse in Olympia continues to prevent critical planning for the start of the school year.

“Smooth and timely program planning and budget adoptions are based on the assumption that the Legislature will finish its work in the early spring. Because Olympia has not agreed on school allocations for next year, final budget decisions cannot be made at this point in time,” said Jose Domenech, district business manager.

At this point, the district cannot move forward with efforts to retain key educators. In turn, this alters the classes offered and student schedules in the middle and high schools.  In the grade school, the district cannot set grade level assignments for teachers, address known class size issues or assign students to classes without knowing how many teachers the Legislature will fund.

“It is shaping up to be an intense summer,” said Fred Woods, Friday Harbor Middle and High School principal. “Once the legislature does act, we will immediately work to complete staffing. Then elementary Principal Diane Ball and I can finalize our schedules and room assignments.”

Ball said, “It would have been best for our teachers and students to have all our hiring and staffing in place, allowing our teachers to know grade level assignments and families to know classroom placements. However, we have done considerable contingency planning based on the various possible legislative outcomes, so once they do give us our allocation, we will be able to move forward without delay.”

A further complication is the statutory requirement for every district to submit its budget to the state in early July.  The board was particularly interested in what could be done if the state still has not acted by the deadline.

“We have a plan for that too,” Domenech said. “We will submit a budget based on the minimum expected revenues in the most current preliminary budget proposals at the Legislature, but with an optimistic budget capacity to account for potential increases to revenues or programs.  This will allow the superintendent to make adjustments while avoiding the need to redo the entire process.”

The San Juan Island School District’s new superintendent, Danna Diaz, was in attendance at the meeting, but will not assume her duties until July 1.

The board expressed its appreciation to the management team for developing a sound plan for a challenging situation.

“It is important that our citizens, and especially our school district families, understand that our district professionals have done everything they can to prepare for next fall.  It is unfortunate, to put it mildly, that the Legislature has not done the same,” said Director Ralph Hahn.